Transformation

pulling coops out of the pens

On Sunday my farmer girl helped me start clearing out the empty chicken pens by the creek. (which is really a dry wash that only runs when it rains)

from the other end

Two of the small coops were were able to move; the larger one was too heavy so I left it for now. Will probably just store plastic pots and such in it for the time being.

coops out, time to dig!

Once the coops were out it was time to start working on garden beds. I had to take my farmer girl back home Sunday afternoon, but she's looking forward to coming back in a couple of weeks.

1st double row ready to plant

I lucked out with having Monday off so I worked on the garden some more and got the first double row ready to plant. More pics in a day or two.

Slow Progress

pop door open

Well it was slow going today on the little silkie coop. I did manage to fix up the sliding pop door though.

pop door closed

door frame try out

I also got the door frame built and tried on for size. But then things got really bogged down. I wanted to use some small panes of glass that I had but of course they were just slightly too big. So a lot of time wasted finagilling what else to use and how to go about it. I'm still working on this problem.

I did manage to put some tar paper on the roof. And in other news, I did actually work in the garden today, but I forgot to take a pic. Of course all you would see would be white row covers. I planted some lettuce in one bed and some carrots in the other.

vermicompost

I also emptied part of my worm box of compost to spread on the seeds I planted. I thought about feeding some of the worms to the chickens but decided to wait until next time I clean out the box as I want to get the population up there before summer.

I also just took a few minutes and hung out with the birds.

Mr. No Name

Precious

Mr. Snowman

Smokey

Since the coop did not get finished and the eggs are due to start hatching tomorrow, I brought the broody girl in to a crate so I can give her the chicks as soon as they hatch. She did not like the box I gave her for a nest but as soon as I put a couple of eggs on the crate floor she promptly sat on them. 

Harvest Monday

lettuce, kale, tatsoi and one lone mache plant

Welcome to Harvest Monday, a great blog hop hosted by Daphne's Dandelions. Stop over there and enjoy visiting with gardeners from around the world!

This week has been warm (for Feb.), dry and very windy. Also very crazy at my work and this week isn't much better. Going on 8 days straight tonight and the past two being graveyard. Looking forward to having 3 days off at the end though. Also looking forward, they are forecasting rain around Wed. and we sure need it badly.

Mostly harvested the usual salad greens this week, many types of lettuce, kale, cilantro, sorrel, chickweed, spinach, along with a couple of tatsoi and one lone mache plant. I did discover that I have mache volunteers in one bed, but they are tiny yet.

Here's a few more pics from inside the greenhouse. You can see some construction details in my post from the other day, Simple Homemade Greenhouse.

Blue bellied lizard

I have several small lizards and a couple of spiders running around in the greenhouse. This lizard fell into one of the big tubs and couldn't get out so I rescued it. It's belly is like electric blue.

The strawberries are beginning to bloom

Salad Bowel lettuce

This 24 inch pot of Salad Bowl lettuce gave me 6 oz in one picking.

tomato blossoms

The crazy Yellow Marble tomato is blooming!




And now I am off to bed; one more night of graveyard....

Harvest Monday & Seed Giveaway Winner

Baby lettuce and edible viola blossoms

Welcome to Harvest Monday! This blog hop is sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions. I do hope you will stop over there and see everyone else's harvests; it is a lot of fun to see fresh homegrown food from around the world!

So a recap of the weeks harvesting, mostly a lot of baby lettuce, which is good considering that Organic Spring Mix is over $5 a pound at the store and I can eat at least two pounds a week.  I've been tossing viola blossoms into the salad mix too. I tried my big purple pansies and they were OK but nothing to brag about. The violas have a slightly sweet taste with a lingering floral essence. They are more bite sized, too.

Baby lettuce and Easter Egg Radishes

Another day there were several Easter Egg Radishes to pull along with the baby lettuces.

Radish, mizuna, spinach, lettuce

On Sunday there was another radish, some mizuna and some baby spinach in addition to the lettuce.  There was also 2 ounces of little tomatoes. I've moved the tomato pot into the greenhouse for more protection. We haven't had a hard freeze yet but when we do I expect the tomatoes will be done for, even in the greenhouse.

Yellow Marble and Princepe Borghese Tomatoes

Harvest Totals Week of November 21-27
Lettuce and other salad greens   2 pounds, 2 oz.
Easter Egg Radish                                     1.5 oz
Tomatoes                                                   2  oz
TOTAL            2 pounds, 4.5 ounces






Now I know everyone wants to know about the seed giveaway! To read more about how I'm doing this you can read this blog post. To read more about this weeks giveaway go to  my very first Seedy Saturday post.  If you want to get in on the action stop in next week for Seedy Saturday. I am trying to get the Mr. Linky thingy so that others with seeds to give away can join in but have been having technical difficulties. I will keep trying but if not I might allow links in the comments for that day.

So now, the Winner is......drumroll please...... BeeGirl! I'll be sending you an email through your profile, but if you don't get it be sure to contact me with your snail mail address so I can send your beet seeds to you! Congratulations!

Building Soil

mmm there's supposed to be steps in there someplace!

First off, Happy Turkey Day. Today I am remembering Thanksgivings past when I lived 1,000 miles away from any family. But we always had a good holiday. Some of those years everything on the table came from our own place except the flour for the pie crust and any sugar used. The meat, milk, eggs, vegetables, pickles and relishes were all homegrown. There were always some bachelors that didn't have any where to go and we would feed them, along with a young couple who were also far from their family. We traded and bartered with these folks all the time and many of them lent a hand when we built our house. Good times indeed.

Today was a very nice day outside so I did some more clean up work out back. There really is a set of steps in that mess someplace! It's buried in silt and leaves that washed down during the July 4th storm.

Shredded tree prunings with fertilizer sprinkled over.

A big part of what I actually worked on today was to continue shredding up weed trees. I also worked on soil building in a new garden bed right next to the sidewalk. I plan to do an informal espaliered apple tree on the fence with perhaps strawberries or flowers and herbs as an under planting. So I loosened the dirt up and piled tree chips over the area. Then I put on some blood meal for nitrogen to help decompose the wood faster, some potash because the soil has none, and some seaweed meal for trace minerals.  I watered all that in.

Silt and oak leaf compost spread over the top

Then I began mucking out that set of steps. They are buried in fine silt mixed with decomposed desert oak leaves. I tossed it on the growing bed, right over the wood chips.

and mulched with fall leaves.

Then I topped off the bed with a bag of free leaves from a friend. I'll probably pick up a new apple tree around January when they come into the garden centers. By then most of the raw organics I've added should be pretty well decomposed. The next time I'm working over the worm box I'll grab a few and drop them in the bed to help things along.

Since the garden is a bit higher these days than the sidewalk I set some old boards right along it to keep the soil and leaves from washing off onto the sidewalk. I also managed to set the posts and string most of the fence (only about 8 feet). There is one small gap next to the green house that I have to cover and I have to make and hang a gate. I haven't decided what I'm going to make a gate out of. I have several options; a couple of different sorts of wood or a wood frame with wire fence or perhaps a piece of junk art.

The Greenhouse

Just a little more greenhouse construction. It's actually all finished but here are some pics. Here in the first pic I'm putting the top layer of plastic on. This is seperate from the rest of the wall so that I can push it back and vent the whole top when things are warming up in spring. In this pic I haven't gotten the door fixed and re-hung yet.

Here's a shot from the outside. I've got the plastic stapled on but I haven't got the tie downs on the top plastic yet.

Today's Harvest

Yellow Marble & Princepe Borghese tomatoes

Several tomato plants volunteered in this pot, mostly Yellow Marbles, but surprise, also a Princepe Borghese, an Italian drying tomato. I picked about two ounces of them today.

Lettuce mix, baby carrots, Hopi Purple Pod Beans

Since the days are getting shorter and the nights cooler I know it's just a matter of time until ol' Jack Frost runs by and wipes out the bean plants. So today I picked all the beans and pulled the vines out. I need to get more peas planted. Besides tomatoes today's harvest was 6 ounces of baby lettuce, 2 ounces of baby carrots (roots only) and 5 pounds, 14 ounces of beans in their pods. I don't have time to shell them before I go to work but suspect the shelled weight will be somewhere around 2 1/2 pounds.

Each Monday Daphne's Dandelions has a Harvest Monday post, so I'll add my link over there. Happy Growing! 

Clean up, Spruce up

dawn through my bedroom window

I love fall, with the weather cooling off, the crispness of the early morning air. The fact that dawn is no longer right in my eyes because the sun has shifted a bit.

I also love that this is when the Heavenly Blue Morning Glories are at their most outrageous. I grow them because they remind me of my Granny, who loved them.

So sorry not to have been posting; came home from vacation and jumped right back into work along with trying to unpack and tidy up.

But the past few days I've been working out in the yard a bit. A lot of things didn't make it through my vacation, but the beans managed to survive and if you look closely at this pic you will see a nice little bowl gourd hiding among the Morning Glories. Most of the beets and carrots made it and I replanted some of the spots where they didn't.

I've been busy planting lettuce and peas. The peas are just practically jumping out of the ground. Bleushokers and Sugar Snaps so far, along with a few sweet peas in the front yard because I'm addicted to their scent. Can't wait for the lettuce to be big enough to eat, probably 2-3 more weeks yet.  I'm slowly getting weeds, debris and trash cleared out and thinking about what else I want to plant.

The volunteer tomato plant turned out to be a Yellow Marble

Violas in the tub, planted sweet peas on the little tower

 

culverts, downstream side

This week I also began on the downstream side of the culverts. Yeah, the one in the middle is bent, my son straightened it out as good as he could this evening. Neither of us were here when the culverts were installed or we could have fixed it and had the bent part installed at the top. You can see that the culverts are uncovered by about 3 feet; that happened during the storm July 4th. This area will take a lot more work than the upstream side did.  In the meantime I blew the motor on the mixer and had to mix the last two batches in the wheel barrow. My son replaced the motor with a used one that he had, so we'll see how long it lasts.

The front steps, with assorted herbs & flowers in pots

east side of the house

Yesterday I started working on cleaning up the east side of the house, so here's the before pic, tho I forgot to take an after pic, so you'll have to wait till tomorrow!

what’s new around here June 27, 2009

what’s new around here

June 27, 2009 at 3:21 pm 

Well lots of things have been growing on, here’s a few pics from the last week or so.
Miracles terrific sunflower is blooming. It is now 8 feet 6 inches tall.
The small fruited tomatoes are loaded. These are the Princepe Borhese. But the kids and I eat them as fast as they come in so we haven’t gotten around to drying any of them yet.
The new bunny condo in the works. This one will hold my four does. Later I will make another one for the two bucks with space for two more grown rabbits or to hold fryers that don’t gain weight fast enough and need a little more time to grow. I suspect that rabbit will replace chicken in our diet this winter.
The small seeded sunflower plants are beginning to really take off and grow.
The King of the Garden lima’s are beginning to bloom at the bottom. The tops of the vines are hitting 9 feet and still going.
WHOA! HELLO THERE! I came around the corner of the house the other evening to discover this guy on my patio. It looked like this rattlesnake had just eaten [big belly bulge visible just past the coffee can]. I hope it was that pesky squirrel! I hated to do it after it did me such a favor, but I did shoot it. With small children around the house it was way too risky to let it keep hanging out, especially just a few feet from the back door.